There's an old African proverb which says, "When two elephants fight, it is the grass which gets trampled."

Network security pros know how it feels to be a blade of grass, because the Microsoft and Cisco pachyderms are fighting over network security standards, and the losers, once again, are the folks on the ground. The companies are working on competing end-to-end security architectures based on Radius, which has become the de facto standard for authenticating users who access networks remotely. Cisco customers must use the Cisco Access Control Server for Radius authentication, while Microsoft customers have to use Microsoft Windows Internet Authentication Service (IAS) Radius Server.

By Preston Gralla at Networking Pipeline.

[ Read more ]